The fight to strike the name “Dixie” from a Marin County school district is as old as the Republic and as young as the memory of those unmindful of the past. The arguments against the name change are straight out of the civil rights resistance playbook.

One of the arguments is that the people advocating change don’t live in the district. But of the 23 speakers at the last Dixie School District board meeting, 18 live in the district. Other longtime veterans who initiated the struggle still live in the county and were asked to participate. Similar “outside agitator” labels were leveled at Martin Luther King Jr. when he left Atlanta to go to Alabama. He answered them in his “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” — “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Truth is no less true because of who says it or where they live. Some whites claim not to have witnessed racism in the district. To tell minorities what to be offended by, when to feel offended and under what circumstances is a refutable presumption. As Abraham Lincoln said, “Only he who wears the shoe knows how tightly it fits.”

Alums of Marin County high schools such as Tina Mitaine had to endure Slave Day in 1988 when white students came to school in black face. Others withstood Mexican Day, when wearing sombreros and bandoleros was thought funny. Sally Matsuishi, on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, found “Jap” painted on her locker at a Marin County school. Her counselor excused the slur with another, explaining that it might have just meant she “was spoiled.”

In the past two years the painted “N” word greeted the newly arrived principal at Tamalpais High School. The same word was recently spray-painted at Redwood High with the name of a long-time counselor attached.

Tam High faced its own moment of truth in 1988 when it changed its mascot from the Indians to the Red-Tailed Hawks. San Rafael barbershop owner Tino Wilson told me recently he started the school as an “Indian,” finishing as a “Hawk.”

Researching history clearly shows nothing is new. The arguments then were against political correctness, the desire to maintain history and tradition. Basically, their view? Get over it. Dixie area residents may soon find themselves up Miller Creek without a paddle.

Think back to the resistance to Muhammad Ali changing his name from Cassius Clay. Or Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Roberto Clemente demanding to be called by his given name and not Bob, as the sportscasters insisted.

“Dixie” is an anachronistic throwback to an era of slavery, bondage and human suffering. By maintaining the name, we do a disservice to the district, the county and the children we seek to educate. It is disingenuous to maintain that Dixie is anything but synonymous with the Confederacy. That was acknowledged in the Dixie School Foundation’s application for landmark status.

The war is over. The South lost. That chapter is closed. I do not deny Confederate history. There is, however, no need to celebrate it, to honor or to memorialize it in Northern California outside of a museum. Let that museum be the original Dixie Schoolhouse with an accurate acknowledgement of the name’s origin. There should be no pride in maintaining a name that brings pain to any segment of our community.

We are missing a teachable moment. Our children need to learn to neither trivialize nor dismiss the sensitivity of others. Or worse yet, to become generationally numb to their pain. What better opportunity than to stand up for Marin County values. Whose side are you on? Certainly, the David Dukes and the Donald Trumps of the world would be pleased with maintaining the status quo.

James Russell Lowell has written: “New occasions teach new duties. Time makes ancient good uncouth. They must ever up and onward who would keep abreast of truth.” Winds of change are sweeping the land. The name Dixie, the song, Confederate statues and flags are being retired. We in Marin are not so special to ignore or think ourselves above doing our part to keep pace with the times.

Quoting Lincoln: “We cannot escape history. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.”

Noah Griffin of Tiburon is a public affairs consultant, speaker and musical performer. He is a former public member of the IJ’s editorial board. He has been advocating for a Dixie School District name change since 1997.